Ministry of Justice Writes Off £56 Million on IT Project

THE GUARDIAN – The Ministry of Justice has written off £56m spent on an IT project after discovering it was late, over budget and duplicated by another department.

Ministers decided to shelve the project, designed to save money on back-office functions, when they realised it was obsolete.

“We wrote off the money because we discovered in 2012 that the Cabinet Office was planning to implement a similar scheme. We could not recoup some of the costs, such as staffing,” a Ministry of Justice spokesperson admitted.

The French firm Steria was one of three companies asked to set up a £116m programme to help run staffing, procurement and payroll services for 90,000 civil servants.